lo8 British Birds, 



I wonder what they all do with it, and how the plenti- 

 ful bleeding affects the patient. For there is certainly 

 no lack of Yellow Hammers all over the country ; and 

 if one looks at the long strings of blown birds' eggs 

 festooned at cottage doors, or hung over the cottage 

 or farm-house mantelpiece, the trophies of some young 

 nest-taking hopeful dwelling there, after the Black- 

 birds' and Thrushes' eggs, the most abundant are almost 

 always those of the Yellow Hammer. We all know 

 his rich plumage and somewhat plaintive song, which, 

 in my school-boy days, used to be Englished into " A 

 very, very little bit of bread and n-o-o c-h-e-e-e-s-e ! " 

 It does not spare materials when engaged in building 

 its nest. Dead grass, small sticks and moss, a few 

 feathers and plentiful hair to form the lining, are ready 

 enough in our fields for its use, and the structure com- 

 pacted with them is placed usually in a low, thick 

 bush on a hedge-bank, well concealed, and but little 

 raised above the soil. Sometimes I have found it in 

 a rough grass-field, amid tufts of rushes and other 

 such-like growth. Sometimes even in a wall-tree, as 

 in my own garden last year ; or in an evergreen shrub, 

 also in my garden a year or two since. But the hedge- 

 side is the rule. The eggs, three to five in number, 

 and often very round in shape, vary considerably in 

 individual cases, but never so much as to leave the 

 accustomed eye in a moment's doubt as to what bird 

 the ^gg belongs to. Of a white ground-colour, scarcely 

 tinged at all with vinous red, or perhaps much suffused, 

 all of them are streaked and veined and spotted with 

 dark brown with a shade of red in it. They are 

 beautiful eggs to my QyQ.—Fig. ^, plate IV, 



